


Year Zero

by habenaria_radiata



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Birthday Sex, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Kingmaker Ending, Outdoor Sex, Post-Septentrione Arc (Devil Survivor 2), Smut, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:08:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24657358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/habenaria_radiata/pseuds/habenaria_radiata
Summary: In a world with no Daiso, no CostCo, no formal bakeries in existence, and nothing but the equivalent of caveman technology, it's understandably difficult to do something special for someone's birthday.Nevertheless, Hibiki tries her best.
Relationships: Hotsuin Yamato/Protagonist (Devil Survivor 2)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	Year Zero

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Cinereous for being kind enough to beta this and make sure my caveman technology is accurate.
> 
> Also, happy birthday to best boy, Yamato Hotsuin.

* * *

Hibiki had thought she was prepared for what it would mean to live on a primeval planet. She thought she could accept it as the only possible price for a world that could exist outside the realm of the Administrators. She had even dared to hope that it might be fun, like a particularly extended camping trip.

If she could go back in time, she would love to kick her past self right in the crotch, because she'd been very wrong.

Living on a new planet was a goddamned nightmare. They had arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs and whatever happened to be on their person, which was at least marginally lucky for them, since Yamato had managed to feed them that first night by killing a huge snake with one of Otome's pens. They had no shelter, no supplies, no nothing at all, and at least half of them had spent the first night in a cave weeping themselves to sleep.

And yet, just as before, they endured somehow. It wasn't a very pretty life. They all had only one change of clothes a piece and no fabric to make more, but they'd figured out how to make very basic soap to keep them all washed. A handful of them had proved surprisingly adept at hunting, and Yamato had enlisted Hibiki's help to make a fish net out of plant fiber. It was almost hilariously rough looking, unevenly knotted and shorter on one side. But it had worked. They were able to maintain a steady source of food, and they had all the time in the world to rebuild humanity from the ground up. Literally.

In the course of a good three months, they had a rustic little village cobbled together by the side of a lake. It had taken a few prototypes to get it right, but they'd found a good, reliable method for building tiny cottages out of narrow tree trunks and bricks made from clay. It was bliss compared to the huge cave they'd all slept in for so many weeks. No one had had any blankets to make the hard ground even slightly less hellish to sleep on, and Keita's snoring fucking echoed thanks to the acoustics. With the new homes, there really was no contest. Fumi had built them all beds using that same flexible plant fiber and the sturdier branches they could find. Still, it was hardly ideal that they couldn't have sex without worrying about someone hearing from the next mud hut over.

Hibiki sighed, deep and exhausted, and she sat against her calves and brushed her bangs out of her face with the back of her hand. This had better work, or it would be a lot of work right down the drain. None of them had been brave enough to tackle baking yet -- not until now. Not one of them had been particularly interested in agriculture in their old lives, so figuring that out had been a trial and a half. Obtaining flour was a particularly acute pain in the ass. God, she'd never known how much work went into food. Finding it in the first place, growing more of it, harvesting it, drying it out, and then grinding it or squishing it or preserving it, all without proper tools that weren't made out of plant twine and sharp rocks...

Eugh, her fingers still hurt. Nervous, she shuffled backwards and bent to the side, peeking into her clay oven to try and see if it was done. It certainly was fluffy. It looked to be a respectable little pastry. She gave it another minute before she slid it out with care, then squinted down at it critically. It looked...it actually looked like it was supposed to. Sort of. It looked good! It was just a shame they had no icing to put on it. She suspected that its intended recipient wouldn't mind, though.

When it was safe enough to touch, Hibiki scrubbed her hands down, flung them as dry as she could, then lifted the pastry into her palms and hopped to her feet. There weren't too many people in her immediate line of sight. Jungo was making stew at the fire, and she could see Io near the lake attempting to turn raw wool into something approaching usable material. No Yamato, however. Odd. She'd thought he was with Jungo cleaning the fish meat.

"Hey, Jungo? Did you see where Yamato went?" she called to him, trotting closer and shaking hair out of her face.

He looked back at her as if surprised to be addressed. His typical slow, dreamy smile spread across his face, and he pointed towards the thicket of trees at the edge of their makeshift village. "He said he was going to get clean before dinner."

"Oh, okay. Thanks!"

She should have guessed that. Yamato was willing to do whatever it took to survive, if only out of pure spite, but that didn't mean he had to enjoy it. He absolutely loathed any kind of butchering, but everyone else being so squeamish meant that either he or Keita got stuck doing the honors ten times out of ten. The night he'd killed that snake, he'd spent nearly an hour hunched in the river, angrily scraping snake blood out from beneath his fingernails.

Hibiki stepped between the trees, following the path they'd made just from the sheer number of times they'd traversed it. The lake was fed by a waterfall that trailed a good ways south, and a number of other small pools and rivers branched off it. They'd reserved one of the bigger ones for bathing, and another one exclusively for Yamato.

Even this far into their adventure, he still refused to be naked around anyone else. When everyone else bathed in big groups, he was more than happy to tell them all to fuck off and stay by himself. As the de-facto co-leader of their ragtag group of survivalists, the rest of them were more than happy to leave him to it, because pissing off Yamato usually meant that there would, mysteriously, be less food that night. They respected not biting the hand that fed them in a slightly more literal manner than most.

As she made the short walk to Yamato's designated pool, the forest was alive with sound. Bugs droned and birds called, and she could hear the distant rustling of bigger animals navigating through the foliage. The closer she got, however, the louder the waterfall became, until it drowned out all the other noises. Yamato had already availed himself of the water. She sidestepped his clothes where they were painstakingly folded and stacked on a rock, and she stepped up behind him where he sat at the very lip, both his legs submerged and his head tilted back.

For a moment, Hibiki couldn't bear to disturb him. In Tokyo, she'd found it a little suspect that he stayed so calm throughout most of the apocalypse. But of course he was. It was easy to stay relaxed when he'd been in control and knew how most everything would unfold. Here, in their new life, he carried tension like a bow string set to snap in half. Yamato despised being out of his depth, and here, all of them were.

Right now, he was slouching a little, his elbows resting on his spread knees and his hair tumbling around his shoulders. It had gotten long and wild when they had no tools to safely cut it, but really, he didn't seem too pressed about it. Hinako had given him an extra hair tie that he used to keep it out of his face any time it started to annoy him.

He tilted his head towards her and shifted to the side in a silent invitation. Hibiki kicked off her shoes and joined him, letting her feet dip into the cool water.

They'd made so much progress, but even still, guilt weighed on her like the iron they still couldn't smelt when they couldn't stoke hot enough fires. It was always at the back of her mind or whispering in her ear. His exhaustion and his misery and his calluses were her fault. This was never the life that Yamato had wanted, and she was the one who talked him into it.

Lowering her head, Hibiki spread her fingers around the pastry, her eyes tracing along one of the cracks splitting the crust. As Yamato followed her gaze, he blinked in curiosity, then opened his eyes wide. "Hibiki? How-"

"Here." Beaming for him, Hibiki thrust it out towards him. "I made some flour! I couldn’t wait for the crops to finish, so I made some out of acorns. Oh, but don't worry - Fumi told me about the tannic acid, so I soaked them and roasted them like three times, and I made some butter from the sheep's milk. I...know we don't have sugar, so, that's not great, but I hope it still tastes okay."

Yamato was still staring at her, his eyebrows furrowed and his head slightly tilted. He really didn't have the faintest idea why she'd brought him a caveman cake. The befuddlement was so adorable that Hibiki couldn't help but laugh at him, swaying lightly and bumping her shoulder into his. "It's your birthday, you nerd!"

Again, she held the little cake out for him to take, and he peered down at it with a furrow still etched between his eyebrows. "...Three times?"

Before she even had the chance to start her response, Hibiki found herself swept up in both his arms, his fingers tangled in her hair and his mouth hot and insistent on her own. She melted into it and clutched the cake in one hand, letting her other arm fold around his neck as she returned his heady kiss. That was the last reaction she was expecting. She couldn’t say she minded.

When he broke away, Hibiki's eyes fluttered open, and she offered him another sunny smile. "Three times. Yep. I'm sorry it's not a proper cupcake. I'm thinking by this time next year, we'll finally have icing."

Yamato snorted at her and dropped his hand down to the small of her back, accepting the pastry with the other. "I don't know what icing is to miss it, Hibiki."

"Eugh, don't tell me that!"

He ignored her in favor of the cake and lifted it to his mouth, taking a small bite of it. He didn't gag on it immediately by any means, but his face also didn't seem to indicate that it was life-changing. Taking it back from him, she nibbled at the other side of it and chewed.

"Oh. This is like paper that has the texture of bread. ...I'm so sorry."

Thank god he didn't know what cupcakes tasted like to be disappointed. Or any kind of cake for that matter.

A warm chuckle from him burned at her stomach, the flames climbing all the higher when his strong fingers fastened around her wrist. With his other hand, he plucked the stolen pastry right back from her and popped the rest of it into his mouth.

It was so sweet of him to eat it, despite not tasting like anything but bitter styrofoam. She loosened in his grip and tilted forward, pressing a soft kiss to his jaw. "Happy birthday, Yamato."

He swallowed and let go of her wrist, reaching up instead to drag his warm, work-rough fingers across her cheek. "Thank you." This time when he kissed her, Hibiki tilted backward with a delicate sigh pluming from her nose, and both her hands settled against his naked back.

It was insane how much the past three months had changed him. Changed her, even. They both had muscle they never would have developed without having to make clay and hand wash clothes and hunt for food and build houses all day long. Yamato had made fun of her for only being five strong in Tokyo, but look at her now! She wasn't as muscular as Yamato was becoming, but she'd gained some pretty admirable guns for herself.

Evidently Yamato approved of her easing backwards, because he pushed her flat onto the rock beneath them, his fingers curled and tracing the curve of her back. He soon reached away from her, though, extending one arm and straining a bit to grab his jacket and yank it off the top of his pile. Hibiki watched him with one eye cracked open, confused until he lifted her head and spread it out beneath her where her hair could fan across it instead of the ground.

It sent her into fits. Hibiki squirmed beneath him and smiled against his mouth, lifting her arms overhead when she felt him reach for the hem of her shirt and tug it up and over her head. "Oh my god! Look at you being so saucy. Outside and everything!"

He had already tossed her shirt away onto his stack of clothes, but at her words, Yamato looked down at her with an utterly baleful look on his face. "I can be persuaded to change that very easily."

"I'm not complaining."

She laughed again and yanked him back down, dragging his hands right back to her ribs. He was ever indulgent of her, tracing at her sides and pushing further upward to palm at her bared breasts and squeeze. Fuck, there was nothing better than his touch. Taking a stuttering inhale, Hibiki pushed her hands between them and sank down to fumble with the fly of her shorts while Yamato dragged hot kisses from her neck down to the curve of her shoulder.

He almost never wanted to do this in the light of day, much less where someone could potentially interrupt. That he could want her so much lit a fire under her, so much so she was sure smoke would start to roll out of her like the ears of her bunny oven. Hibiki arched up and yanked, pushing her shorts down her thighs, and Yamato took them down the rest of the way and flung them away like trash.

Between her open legs, Yamato sat back and brought his hands lower, his fingertips resting against her ankles and traveling up the sides of her legs, then sliding up beneath the hems of her carrot panties. Like her shorts, he dragged them down to bare her entirely. It wasn't the first time she was naked out in the woods, but for whatever reason, it still felt more lurid than ever before. Probably because most of the other times she was naked, it wasn't to fuck under a waterfall.

Yamato straightened out on top of her once again, his hand sliding along the underside of her knee and lifting. The way he tucked her leg around his hip made her want to fucking swoon. She pushed her shoulders back into the sun-warmed rock and arched her neck, holding onto his with one arm and letting the other drape by the side of her head.

Arousal already simmered between her thighs, and the simmer turned to a full boil as his thumb pressed down against her clit. She clenched her legs hard and rocked beneath him, her breathing coming heavier and the hand by her head curling into a tight fist. It was Yamato's birthday, but she was the one who felt like she was being spoiled.

He pushed a little harder, rolling his thumb and grasping at her hip with his free hand while he trailed yet more kisses from the underside of her chin up to her mouth. Lust always made her blood feel thicker, oozing through her veins as sweetly as molasses. Now was no different, and she gasped and sighed for him and kissed him back, letting her fingers trail around his shoulder and up to his face where his hair brushed against her knuckles.

Finally, his fingers drew away, and the heavier weight of his erection made itself known instead. She bucked hard enough to grind against him, only stilling when Yamato grabbed her by the hips and tilted them to slide his cock inside of her in one smooth motion. A harsh gasp sounded from her. No matter how accustomed she was to the feeling, her body still clamped down on instinct.

There was nothing like it on this earth, and now she was afforded the chance to actually let him hear about it. For once, she didn't have to swallow every overwhelmed moan, every lurid murmur of his name for fear of being overheard. Hibiki pressed her lips to his ear and threw her arms around him, breathing out hard each time he rocked into her. She'd thought he might feel frantic and rushed trying to do this outside, but he seemed as appreciative of the privacy as she did. Each thrust was so thorough it shook her from her toes up to the top of her head, her body twined tightly around him and her fingers threaded through his long hair.

He tilted to the side just enough to take her breast into his hand, stroking at her pale, fragile skin and moving to kiss her again. It charmed her that even after this long, even while he was fucking her so hard and deep, he was such a shy kisser. He always waited until she introduced her tongue to meet it, but meet it he did, reaching up from her breast to brush her hair back from her cheek.

Arousal pulsed redder and hotter, from her clenched thighs and out further to her heart throbbing in her throat. The more he thrust, the further and further she spread her legs for more, the balls of her feet digging into the rock and her fingers tighter in his hair.

She came with his name blistering her mouth, her legs tightening around him like a vice to keep him there until he came just as hard as she did. He eased out of her with a heavy groan, but he made no move to climb off of her. Instead, he let his forehead rest against hers, his back rising and falling as he fought to catch his breath.

Eventually, he rolled onto his back and scooped her to his chest where she closed her eyes and draped herself between his legs. "As far as birthdays go, how was that? A solid six out of ten? Maybe a seven for the really good sex?"

He scoffed at her again and kissed the top of her head. "Ten out of ten. I've never had anyone celebrate my birthday before."

Hibiki squawked in utter indignation and pushed herself up onto her hands. "What?! Unacceptable. That's such bullshit! Ugh, you deserve all the birthdays. I'm throwing you another one tomorrow. And then after that. We have seventeen more to make up for."

"Seven-” He paused, then laughed at her, low and hard. “Are you going to bake me an acorn cake every day?"

"Yes. Every day. At least until you run out of retroactive birthdays."

Beneath her, Yamato smiled. A genuine one, not one of his smirks like when he was happy but also smug. "Then I look forward to it."

She bent down to kiss him once more, both her hands groping blindly for his own.

It wasn't a pretty life out in the wilderness.

But maybe it wasn't so bad.


End file.
